Lev Borisovich Kamenev

“ There can be nothing more mistaken than to assume that the Russian proletariat, or even its leader, the Communist Party, came into power with recipes, prepared in advance, of practical measures for the realisation of the dictatorship. Only "Socialist" ignoramuses, or charlatans, could suggest that the Russian Communists came into power with a prepared plan for a standing army, Extraordinary Commissions, and limitations of political liberty, to which the Russian proletariat was obliged to recur for self-defence after bitter experience. ”

“ The suppression of all these various forms of resistance can be as little the work of an organisation created in the narrow sphere of the trade union movement, as, say, of a workers' co-operative organisation. It can be successfully achieved only by a general organisation of all the workers, in the shape of their Soviets, in which are represented all the forms of the labour movement, and which are under the guidance of a political party, concentrating in itself the whole experience of the previous struggle of the working class. ”

“ The proletariat not only seizes power; in grasping it, the proletariat gives to it such a character, such a degree of concentration, energy, determination, absoluteness, infinitude, as according to the words of the programme, 'will allow it to crush all resistance on the part of the exploiters.' That is the fundamental feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. ”

“ The experience of the workers of Russia, Finland, Hungary and Germany allows us to establish an empiric law of the development of proletarian dictatorship, which may be expressed approximately in the following words. The fact of the conquest of the central political power by the proletariat in no wise completes the struggle for power, but only marks the beginning of a new and more determined period of warfare between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. ”

“ The suppression of the resistance of the exploiters—which is the fundamental task of the dictatorship—is not only a military, or only a political, or only an economic task; it is all of them—military, political, economic. ”

“ Democracy, parliaments, elections, freedom of the press, remained—in so far as they did remain—a mere screen; in reality all the countries drawn into the war—the whole world—were governed by the methods of a dictatorship, which utilised, when it happened to be convenient and profitable, elections, parliaments and the press. ”

“ An organisation which would satisfy all these conditions and solve all the problems incumbent upon it may be called, of course, by any name whatsoever; but in reality—and if we do not play with words—such an organisation can only be the political party of the proletariat; i.e., an organisation of the most advanced, revolutionary elements of the proletariat, united by their common political programme and an iron discipline. ”

“ During several years, before the eyes of the whole human race, a picture of the practice of dictatorship is unrolled—a dictatorship ruling over the whole world, determining everything, regulating everything, penetrating everything, and confirming its existence by 20,000,000 corpses on the fields of Europe and Asia. ”

“ The actual Russian bourgeoisie always was, and up to the October Revolution remained, the least organised, the least conscious in the sense of class, the least united of all bourgeois classes in the countries of the old capitalist order. The Russian peasantry had not time enough to develop that class of strong and politically-united-peasants, which is the basis of a series of bourgeois parties in the West. ”

“ The greatest misfortune which could befall the proletarian army after seizing the strongholds of capitalism, would be if the apparatus of leadership proved to be in the hands of men, groups, or organisations whose previous work had been carried out only in the sphere of the labour movement. ”

“ In our struggle for Communism, we constantly meet with these facts, we constantly have to remark how great is the power of the old ideology even over the best men of the present Labour movement—in so far as these men have grown up in the atmosphere of pre-war Europe. ”

“ The sovereignty of the people, democracy, the State, parliamentarism, even from the point of view of their hypocritical bourgeois defenders, cannot but mean the discussion and decision, if only of the most important questions, of the state and social life by the citizens themselves, "free" and "equal" in the eyes of the law. ”

“ Propaganda based on this may be dictated either by individual stupidity, or the interest of a group of persons in concealing from the proletariat the circumstances of the forthcoming struggle, and in preventing it from preparing for the same.
When persons, calling themselves Socialists, declare that the course of dictatorship, admissible and explicable for Russia, is in no wise obligatory or inevitable for any other capitalist country, they proclaim a thing directly contrary to truth. ”

“ The resistance of the exploiters acquires only its most acute form during an armed conflict; but the rich peasantry, which will not give the bread for the famishing population; the engineers who sabotage industry; and the bankers who bring confusion into the mutual account of the industrial enterprises by concealing their books—are not less important factors in the resistance of the bourgeoisie. ”

“ The formation of a new army, the feeding of the country, the building up of industry on new principles, the organisation of law courts, the establishment of relations with the peasants, the diplomatic relations with other countries—all these matters become at once the immediate tasks of the general staff of the victorious proletarian army. ”

“ The increased severity in the dictatorship was called forth by a series of very elementary facts. In April, the government of Skoropadsky was organised in Kieff; in May took place the rising of the Czecho-Slovaks, their siezure of the railway system and the formation of the Socialist-Revolutionary government in the East; in May, too, the Cossack counter-revolution on the Don—the Russian Vendée—acquired increased importance under the command of General Krasnoff. ”